Fangwen L. Noor

I attribute my success to mentorship and sponsorship throughout my career. From professors at grad school to managers early in my career who shepherded me along, I had a lot of mentors and sponsors who helped me. But I also think timing was really good. About 20 years ago, AWS started the notion of public cloud, and about 12 years ago when I was starting out, it was getting enterprise-ready and becoming mainstream. There was a huge transformation from on-premise data centers to the public cloud, and now we're seeing another wave with AI transformation. I think that part is a bit of luck, and I caught the wave right out of school when cloud was becoming mainstream. So the timing and mentorship definitely matter.

The best career advice I've received is to find your people. It's about the difference between sponsorship and mentorship. Mentors are great, but you need more than that. You need someone that believes in you, speaks highly of you, and promotes you behind closed doors when you're not at the table, acting as your advocate and sponsor. That's what helps you thrive in your career. Secondly, I would say keep a learning mindset. Technology is an ever-changing field, so I personally happened to catch the wave from SAP to cloud, and then now to Gen AI. You really need to stay alert and just keep learning throughout your career.

For young women entering this field, whether you're navigating through a career in technology or finding your own personal pursuit, I would say look at it as a long game. Career growth is never a ladder. I see it as like a jungle gym. Sometimes you might take a step backward and take two steps forward, so think about it as a 30 to 40 year long game. Ride with the wave, keep an open mind, and keep updated with the new technologies. What women are really strong at compared to male counterparts, in my experience, is they are usually more communicative and more relation-driven, which is very important in the tech world these days. It's not just about new technology, but also understanding your customer, the pain points of your user, and being empathetic and considerate about that. I think women specifically have an advantage in this area.

There are definitely a lot of opportunities in my field. In my field, it's about 10% women and 90% men. It's an uphill battle, but it's also something that's very close to my heart because I started in the STEM field early on when I was a little girl. I always knew that I wanted to be in this field and that I was good at it, and then I continued to pursue it. So don't lose hope. I think it's promising. We make changes every generation, pushing the goalposts forward a little bit. For women, the cliff usually happens, from what I observe, from childbirth and the first couple years as a young mother. It's difficult, but just stay at the table, keep pushing, get as much help as you could, outsource, work with your partner, and the kids will grow up eventually. My kids are in elementary school now, and I have much more time to dedicate to my career.

I would say grit and resilience are most important to me. When I started my career, it was during the financial crisis in 2008, right after I graduated. There's been a lot of ups and downs in the job market, and it cycles through every 10 years or so with new technology and new generations of talent. What drives me throughout that is having the grit and knowing that a setback is just a setback, it's not forever. I challenge myself to do better. I want to be an example for the next generation of females as well. I have a daughter and a son, and it's important for me that they understand the work I'm doing. I want my son to be a supportive partner in the future for his partner, but I also want my daughter to understand she could take up her rightful space at the table.